The present invention relates generally to communications error recovery, and in particular to recovery from communication errors in networking equipment having a shared control bus architecture.
Network switching equipment typically comprises a set of physical ports, one or more packet processors that receive data packets from and send packets to a physical port (or to a plurality of physical ports) of the network switching device via PHY and MAC circuitry, and a controller (typically CPU-based). The packet processors may be ASICs or FPGAs. The physical ports and packet processors (each of which has its own input and output ports) may be arrayed over a plurality of linecards, as in a chassis type unit, or on a single circuit board, as in a stackable unit. A received data packet can be processed and forwarded by a packet processor to another physical port coupled to an output port of the same packet processor. Alternatively, the received data packet can be forwarded by a receiving packet processor through a switching fabric to another packet processor to be further processed and forwarded via one of its output ports to a physical port of the switching device
During normal operation, there is occasional data communication between the respective packet processors and the CPU-based controller. The CPU-based controller may be on a separate management circuit board, such as in a typical chassis type network switching device, or on the same circuit board, as in a typical stackable type network switching device. In some network switching devices, there may be a dedicated controller for each packet processor or for a plural subset of the packet processors of the switching device In a cost optimized system, on the other hand, there may be one CPU-based controller for the whole system, e.g., for the entire set of packet processors of the network switching device. This centralized architecture is advantageous from a system-cost point of view, since there is only one CPU-based controller for all of the packet processors, but it poses some challenges, since there is a shared control bus coupling the CPU-based controller to the packet processors. The complex intercoupling of data structures between the controller and the packet processor that form the basis of controller-packet processor communication is susceptible to malfunctions that can render the system unusable.